


Sore spots

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 2, Act 3, Edge Play, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, Merrill trolling humans is life, Rope Bondage, Switching, all the talking, kink with check-ins, learning boundaries, lots of talking, new relationships, oh shit there's feelings, once again Merrill POV takes over my brain, vignette structure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:11:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10412895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: Merrill and Isabela surprise each other more often than they don't. They might be each other's favourite sorts of messes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/gifts).



> Thank you for patience. This was written during some medical hell where I was only allowed to get one hour's sleep at a time for nearly a month. Your prompt was utterly gorgeous and I hope I did it justice.

Two women. Too much hope. The Hanged Man.

“You have a dreadful card face, kitten.”

Merrill shrugs. “Everyone says that,” she says, while Isabela watches her eyes narrow over the faded scraps she’d holding up to the light. “But why would I be sneaky about this? Is there any point?”

“Sneaky _is_ the point,” Isabela says. She lets herself laugh with it. Enjoys the warmth from noise and Merrill’s half-hidden eye-smile and the way her body feels after three days without Hawke dragging them through someone’s attic.

(It’s never a _fun_ attic.)

“I’ll save my sneak, I think,” Merrill says, setting her cards down and reaching for Isabela’s glass.

Isabela catches her hand halfway, grinning. “For what?”

Their fingers tangle together, Merrill’s nail scoring along a fading callous in a way that makes something tighten in Isabela’s throat.

She’s losing her ship hands. Merrill has a gift for warming sore spots.

“I can’t tell you,” Merrill says, colour high. “Or it wouldn’t be sneaking.”

* * *

 

“I can’t tell you,” Merrill says, looking at the ruin of glass on her floor. She imagines scorched sand rising thick from her skin. It’s in her throat. Clogs there. She should move. She should try again: before Hawke needs a mage; before she’s sent halfway up the coast looking for runaway humans or broken spoons; before Marethari gives her up completely. 

The roof is leaking.  It’s running down her back in house tears.  She should fix it. She should— _Elgar’nan_ , she needs words. She should answer Isabela.

Her friend is right there, after all. Kneeling next to her in the mess, nose wrinkled as she brings a jagged, reeking fragment of glass and holds it up to the light.

“What are you going to do now, Merrill?” she’d asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

_Because I don’t know. I am so—_

\--the next time Merrill blinks, she sees Isabela pushing glass away in a wide circle.

“Everything’s an awful mess,” she mumbles. “Don’t do that, Isabela, I’ll—“

Warmth and weight at her side. An arm around her shoulders, tugging her down. “—Hush,” Isabela says.

Legs tangle, Merrill’s shoulder aches against the floor— _I really do need to clean this floor_ —until Isabela curves and curls and Merrill is pressed into her chest. Her heartbeat, strong through fabric and leather and skin. She needs a bath. 

Merrill’s eyes close.

“This is one of my favourite sorts of messes, sweet thing,” Isabela murmurs.

“Mhmm?”

“The sort we’re not going to clean up until _later_.” 

* * *

 

“This is a very _good_ sort of mess, isn’t it?”

Isabela does not look up. She’s sitting at end of one of Kirkwall’s worst piers, the wood gone halfway to lattice and the water slick with oil. Kelp moves sluggishly with every tug of tide or boat or thick air. Gulls screech, curling and savage.

Merrill stands at her back, breathing hard.

Did she run through the docks?

“I mean, everyone’s _busy_ ,” Merrill says. “And it’s tangled. I’m nearly used to the shouting.” She pauses. “Though I don’t know about the smell.”

Isabela’s jaw aches, but she can’t help her smile. She lifts her head, watches Merrill tilt hers in self-satisfaction.

“That’s better.”

Isabela snorts. “What is It, Merrill?”

“I just wanted to find you,” she says. “It was easy.”

“That’s me.”

Merrill’s expression turns quizzical. “I know that’s a sex joke, Isabela,” she says, “But I’m not sure _how_ it’s a sex joke.”  

Isabela swallows. It’s not quite a laugh. “That, kitten, makes me want to do filthy things with diagrams.”

“That _would_ be lovely, I’m sure,” Merrill says, easing down beside her. “But I still don’t know what that has to do with human sex jokes. I don’t need a diagram to know it’d be very nice to feel you up to the wrist while you’re tied to the bed, even if It is pretty.” She grins. “Bodies aren’t easy, anyway. Not one of them. Have you ever thought about how we’re all put together, because, I—Isabela?”

“Merrill,” Isabela says, slowly. “Why are we talking about fisting?”

Chapped lips press her cheek. “Because you looked sad.”

Another kiss. “And because I wanted to be sneaky,” she says, laughing a warm, quiet exhale, lip caught between her teeth. “You all talk to me like I’ve never been touched.”

“That,” Isabela says, “Was not my best choice.” She reaches out, grazes Merrill’s jaw with her thumb, smiling as the other woman leans into the brief touch.

“Would you make another?”

“I might, kitten.”

* * *

 

“I _might_ ,” Merril says. “I might, I might not, I— _mmph_ , that’s a lovely try. Thank you.”

Isabela shudders.

They’re in Isabela’s room at the Hanged Man. If she wasn’t on the bed, Merrill thinks, she’d stick to the floor, but that can’t be helped. The bed is clean, sheets frayed soft on her knees and bunched all up under Isabela as she pulls against ropes they’d both hooked through the splintery wooden slats, laughing the whole time.

Sex _should_ have laughter in it. Bodies are peculiar. They make noises. Some touches only work on days when they both need teeth and bruises – otherwise there’s just a lot of tickling, and even that is never bad. It’s a warm mess of giving that comes from kisses in Hightown gardens or in the rain on the Wounded Coast, when water gets into their mouths and Isabela is all biting, swearing _speed_ , as if the tide around their ankles will suck them under if she doesn’t feel someone else’s skin. That was the week before she left. The months of boat chasing and Hawke cursing her name into bad beer.

Hawke is still full of curses, a month after the Arishok left scars and broken buildings, with Hawke’s ribs gone to more powder than the Viscount’s estate.

 Isabela’s kisses are harder to coax. Merrill is half sure the world will end and that her mouth will always taste of mirror and sulphur. But sometimes, they meet. And things can be slow.

Merrill’s skin aches from waiting in it, her fingertips still abraded from sail rope, her palm stinging and almost as flushed as the red marks across Isabela’s breasts and thighs and belly.

Merrill watches Isabela swallow. She feels something sweet and inchoate relax as her friend groans, deep in her throat, hips rising and working in small circles against air – she’d let the rope have that much slack. Tangled and smoothed and knotted them like the branches from her childhood, all while Isabela cajoled and teased and nipped her shoulder, her fingertips. She’d have an odd bruise on her elbow.

(“ _Tie me up_ , you said, and then you spend half your time fighting me. Not that I don’t love that, of course.”

“That’s just fun, sweet thing.” Bright teeth. Mirrored sparks from her necklace (off, coiled around one of Merrill’s wrists) and earrings (sill on, sill clinking with each movement of her head, the metal in Merrill’s mouth like blood when she flicked her tongue behind Isabela’s ear.) She clenches her fist, checking the ropes.

“There’s no ‘just’,” Merrill had said. Silly words, tripping out rougher than she wanted, even as she let her hand drift to Isabela’s cunt – slap down with three fingers, then an open palm, more sound than weight. “It’s fun. It’s—oh, I’m rambling.” She makes a pattern. Wet body. Small strikes. Stronger ones. Isabela’s body open and wanting against her hand.  “I should be doing other things.”)

Now, the room is thick with sex and Merrill does not touch her. She drags her own tongue over her fingertips. Remembering. Tasting. Her own thighs still sore and shaking, cunt still wet from Isabela’s mouth. She’s wrenched herself away before climax. Promise-hope-and-taunt.  

“ _Touch me_ ,” Isabela says. “Or let me finish you.”

“I might,” Merrill whispers. “I might, I might, I—“

“— _please_.”

Merrill shudders, She leans forward. Grazes Isabela’s cheek and the corner of her mouth in an open kiss, fingers skating down her arms, enjoying the tense muscles and checking bindings to make sure Isabela’s hands are still safe. Slides her own thumb beneath one knot until Isabela’s heartbeat is loud under her own skin.

“Please?”

“ _Please_.”

Merrill pulls one hand from the ropes as she kisses her, pressing and flicking and teasing until they’re both ragged and run out, each laughing into the other’s mouth.

Two women. The Hanged Man. Just enough hope.


End file.
